slate virtual recording studio pcie for mac

Slate Virtual Recording Studio Pcie Mac Via Thunderbolt

You can flip between the units using the tabs at the top of the GUI.

How did they hold up and most importantly, how do they sound in action Build Quality Lets start with the nitty gritty.

The 1U rack chassis is good and solid, all the pots and switchgear feel very nice and the unit has a quality look at feel to it.

The pot tops (knobs) are a lovely knurled design which are very nice to use.

The switches are simple but in talking with Steven Slate at NAMM I discovered one of his missions for the VRS8 was to build the best quality interface he could without the bells and whistles which can boost the price to us, the end user.

I would not go as far to say function over form but its a simple looking interface with no screens or metering.

The front panel features the 8 gain pots for the 8 Slate Ultra Linear mic preamps like that found in the original VMS ONE mic pre which shipped with the early Virtual Microphone System.

There are also 2 toggle switches to switch the first 2 channels between the DI or Line.

All to often this is an overlooked feature but a good DI input can save a bass tone.

Judge for yourself but I think the bass sounds really good on the track we recorded.

At this point it is worth noting, you MUST use balanced cables for your monitor outs.

If you are connecting the VRS8 directly to your speakers, which is the norm for this kind of set-up, this is nothing new, just get yourself some quality TRS jack to XLR cables.

The other 6 line outs can be configured using the VRS8 Control Panel software, more on this later.

Slate Virtual Recording Studio Pcie Mac Via Thunderbolt

Connecting The VRS8 To Your Computer The VRS8 can connect to your Mac via Thunderbolt, you can then daisy chain up to 6 units together to give you use to 48 channels of IO.

At the time of writing this the VRS8 does not support Windows.

There will be an option to use a small (supplied) PCIe card inside your tower (big box) PC but this is not yet supported.

Its also worth noting that this option only supports one VRS8, so sadly Windows users are going to be limited to 8 channels of IO.

Its worth noting that if, as I was you are using two or more VRS8 units you should WorkClock these together.

There is no magic clock hidden inside the Thunderbolt data stream.

Your DAW can be configured to deal with all routing and monitoring duties.

You only really need to use the control panel to configure what the headphone outputs are doing.

However the VRS8 control panel does have some nice features that mean you might prefer to use it alongside your DAW.

On the left we have the inputs from the 8 channels of each of the VRS8 units you have attached.

Slate Virtual Recording Studio Pcie For Mac